Storage cabinets, such as might be installed in a household kitchen, are commonly of two types, one being referred to as a European style cabinet, the other being referred to as a traditional U.S. cabinet.
The traditional U.S. cabinet structure is comprised of a rectangular box-like structure and a separately constructed face frame. After construction of the rectangular box-like structure, the face frame is secured to the box. A cabinet door is generally installed by hinges secured to the face frame. The side and top edges of the face frame typically project slightly beyond the side and top edges of the box. This provides an installer with extra room to fit the box on a wall or ceiling, with the face frames of adjacent cabinets abutting one another to present a precise appearance from the exterior of the cabinets. This providing of extra room between adjacent cabinets is desirable since conventional walls, floors, and ceilings to which the cabinets are installed are generally not constructed in a precisely square fashion. The extra room between boxes provided by the extending face frame enables the installer to accommodate irregularities in the surfaces against which the cabinets are being installed. The traditional U.S. cabinet provides a cosmetically effective cabinet structure, but the construction of the face frames and their installation to the cabinet box typically consumes in excess of half of the construction time for the cabinet.
The usual European cabinet structure simply comprises a rectangular box void of the face frame found on the traditional U.S. cabinet structure. The sides and top of the box are flush with their exposed front edges. The cabinet doors are mounted to the exposed vertical edges of the box so that no portion of the cabinet box is viewed in the completed closed cabinet structure. This type of box construction lends itself to automation, since it totally eliminates the precise construction and fitting of separable face frames to the cabinet box. However, it is extremely difficult for an installer to install European cabinets since there is no excess room about the cabinet to accommodate wall or ceiling surface variations.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to overcome these shortcomings of the prior art and to provide a cabinet construction which lends itself to automation during manufacture, yet is easy to install.